BlueTie Blog

Version 6.0 Launches

The installation of Version 6.0 is complete and the new features now available to everyone. It's been a long time coming and a lot of hard work by everyone here and we're very excited to bring you these improvements. We've put together a summary of the new features in this PDF. Enjoy!

Spam Prevention Improvements

By now you might have noticed a significant change in the number of Junk Mail messages you are receiving in you BlueTie email. In my own account, I have seen a reduction of 85.8% since we made some improvements to Spam filtering last Wednesday the 16th. Changes to Spam checking system have helped us improve our Junk Mail filtering significantly already and this is only the first step. An additional change scheduled to be complete in the summer will further improve Junk Mail blocking.

In fact, looking at my current account, my Junk Mail setting is on the lowest possible setting, 0 (zero). By looking at the headers of the emails in my Junk Mail folder I can tell that if our next change to Junk Mail/Spam Filtering were in right now I would have received exactly 0, yes that's Zero with a capital Z, emails in my Junk Mail folder. Now your individual mileage may vary depending on your Junk Mail settings and the type of email you receive but we're seeing quantifiable improvement already. We'll post an update here on the Blog when we get closer on the second change to our filtering.

In the meantime, let us know if you are recognizing reduced Junk Mail to either your Inbox or Junk Mail folders or both, we'd really like to know how it's working for you. You can post a response here or, as always, email me directly: jeremy@bluetie.com

Version 6.0 Feature Preview

As we previously mentioned, we're working hard to finalize Version 6.0 for a late April installation and wanted to let you know that we are about two weeks from implementation. Our current plan has us actually upgrading our systems on Thursday May 1st. More information will be sent to registered users over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at some of the updates:

(Note: Click on the images for a larger view)

Calendar
In this screen shot you can see the new Calendar. Notice how the Day, Week and Month views are now tabs across the top along with a Meeting Requests tab. Also notice how my mini calendar is docked on the left below my Simpleclick (R) list. This is part of the new custom layout functionality. You can rearrange components on the page to make the layout work the way you want. In this case, moving my mini calendar gives me more space for my main calendar. This custom layout will also persist across browsers and locations. So if I'm using Internet Explorer at the office and Firefox at home my custom layouts will show up in both places.

Meeting Requests
There are several changes to meeting requests including:

• A new meeting request screen
• Meeting requests are sent to attendees as emails
• Hosts can be notified via email when attendees accept or decline
• Attendees can choose to send a message to the host when responding to a meeting request.

The screen shot here shows a meeting request in my Inbox. At the top I can respond Accept, Decline or Tentative and I can also click over to view my Calendar. The request includes all of the meeting details and at the bottom I can enter a message that will be sent to the host along with my response. So I could for example, decline this request but include a note to the host that recommends an alternate person in my place.

Email
There are two features in Email we know you're going to be very excited about. The first is AutoComplete; you start typing in an email address and we provide a list of possible matches in your contacts to choose from. We've also added a feature that lets you know when you've sent an email to contacts who are not already in your contacts and prompts you to add them. You can turn this feature on or off depending on your preference.

These are just a few of the new features you'll be seeing in a couple of weeks. If you're already a BlueTie user expect more information via email as we get closer to May 1st.

Update on Changes for Spam Management

As promised here's an update on our ongoing effort to fight Spam for our users.....

For simplicity sake, let's categorize Spam in the following three categories:

1) Known Spam: Email is first checked to see if it is being sent from a known spam location. If so, this email is abruptly discarded and is not processed by our spam rating system and is never delivered to any user. 91% of all the mail our users receive falls into this category and is summarily rejected.

Email that gets past the Known Spam check gets a rating and depending on the rating it is given, falls into one of these places in your account:

2) Junk-Mail Folder: This is email that is rated likely to be spam. Emails that get over a specific rating (currently a 5) are deemed spam and sent to your junk mail folder.

3) Inbox Folder: Some spam email is very cleverly disguised not to look like spam and so our spam rating system gives it a spam score (less than 5). This is the spam that gets into your inbox. Your regular emails, the email you do want, also rates lower than 5 and that's how it gets to your inbox.

So what are we doing about the quantity of junk mail that gets to you? We're working on two things:

1) We are extending our Known Spam capability by enhancing our early detection system to block more spam right at the beginning. We continually update our early detection system, we're now going to be expanding it. Our initial tests indicate that we can improve our initial spam blocking by 30%, which means that instead of blocking 91% of all email, we'll now be blocking more than 95%. This change will increase the amount of spam blocked at the very beginning and that means it will also reduce the amount of spam to your Inbox and your Junk-Mail folder.

2) We've been tracking the ratings of Junk-Mail for some time now and after reviewing the data we've been able to determine that just about everything over a certain number can very safely be qualified as junk. That number on our current scale is 10. So emails that score over 10 are no longer going to be delivered to your junk-mail folder. This change will reduce the amount of spam in your Junk-Mail folder by 60 to 65%.

These changes should signficantly reduce the amount of spam to your Junk-Mail folder and help reduce the amount of Junk-Mail in your Inbox. We don't have exact timing for the changes but we expect them to be complete before the end of June.

A couple of final notes:
As you can today, you will still be able to set your own spam level in your email preferences. So if you want to allow more spam or you are getting some false positives you can still adjust your personal spam rating.

If you're curious about what emails in your account are rated just open an email message and select Full Headers from the menu at the top. Find the line that says: X-Spam-Status and there you will find your score and current threshold. In the example below you'll see that this message was rated 27.6, well above the required 5.0.

That's the update. Please post your feedback or contact me directly at jeremy@bluetie.com.

Product Improvements Update

Well it's been over a month since our last product update. During that time we've been working hard on the improvements we outlined in the last post and here's the latest:

Version 6.0

Version 6.0 is current being testing by our Quality Assurance department. Originally scheduled for late March, we're now looking at a late April implementation for Version 6.0. All of the features we noted previously are going to be included in the release. We're taking some additional time for two reasons:

1) We're ensuring that the application quality is high. As I noted last time, when it comes down to a decision between getting you updates by a specific timeframe and getting you quality updates we're going to err on the side of quality.

2) We must ensure that our larger customers, who have their own internal IT staff and training departments, have plenty of time in a pre-release beta to prepare and complete their training documentation and course planning.

We'll post here on the blog two weeks before a definitive implementation date but as noted we are currently scheduled for late April.

Version 6.5

Our development team is making great progress on this Version which is focused entirely on improving speed. The scope remains unchanged from our previous note and I'll post additional details on the project over the next couple of weeks.

Spam Management

Thanks to everyone who recently provided feedback to our Spam Management survey. We got some great insights and are just about done mapping out a specific series of changes to improve spam management. We'll have our approach nailed down by the end of the month and the first set of improvements should be complete in April. As soon as we've put the final touches on the plan I'll post details here on the blog. Look for an update next week.

Direct Connect

We recently released an updated version of our Direct Connect Plug-In for Outlook. The new wizard included improvement in configuring synchronization for new customers and email synchronization is faster. We're continuing to finalize plans for a long term replacement of our existing plug-in. Our original synchronization tool was around long before webmail synchronization with Outlook was offered by everyone and there are some additional features we would like to offer before the end of the year.

Check back next week for another update.

Improvements based on your feedback...

Customer feedback is essential to BlueTie. It helps us prioritize enhancements to our email and collaboration suite. To that end, we recently conducted a customer satisfaction survey, and wanted to address some of the feedback we received immediately; to let our users know what improvements are being made based on what we heard.

The feedback we received falls into four primary initiatives:

Version 6.0

We are currently in the testing phase on a number of application improvements that were noted in the open ended feedback questions. Below is a list of just some of the improvements that you will see in the next major release:

• A new, faster calendar. This includes an updated display of the calendar, especially in weekly and monthly view, and improves the shared calendar listing.
• Related to the new calendar are changes to the New Meeting Request window. Enhancements here include a number of things you've asked for, most notably:

§         The ability to send attachments as part of the meeting request

§         A button that allows you to send emails to all meeting attendees after the original invitation was sent

§         Allows (or the preference to allow) meeting organizers to receive attendee responses via email

§         Allows attendees to receive invites via email and allows attendees to respond to invites with comments

• We've streamlined our file attachment functionality and updated how files attached to an email are displayed.
• Auto-complete will be available in this release. Just begin to type the name or email address of someone in your contact list, and auto-complete will display on-the-fly matches.
• You’ll be able to automatically save the email addresses of your outbound emails to your contacts as new contacts.
• We’ve added reply flags on emails to tell if you have forwarded and/or replied to an email.
• You can set email priority to high, medium or low.
• There's a new version of the Task List where tasks are listed and details can be viewed in a separate preview pane. It also includes new printing features for printing all tasks, or only a specific group that you have selected.
• Last but definitely not least: the power to change the layout of the application and save it. Want to put your email preview pane on the right, shrink the size of the date field in your email list, add the priority field in your email list? No problem, just save your custom layout. Want to have one layout for your computer at work and another for your computer at home, no problem; you can have multiple layouts for your account.

Version 6.0 is currently scheduled to implement in late March.

Application Speed (Version 6.5)

As we've added features and hundreds of thousands of users, we've created a significant load on our systems and applications. We have already begun a project specifically to investigate options for increasing application speed for a growing number of active users. You'll see some increases in performance with the Version 6.0 release and then this project, which is currently in the planning phase, is scheduled to be completed in June. The scope of the project includes optimizing login, contacts, overall application, email delivery, email application - including not refreshing the entire screen when you move or delete an email message - and POP/IMAP connectivity.

Spam Management

Many of you noted that you're getting a lot of junk mail. Given that more than 85% of all email sent is junk mail, this is not terribly surprising. The amount of junk mail that we don't deliver to you is staggering, and is in the millions - yes that's millions - of emails every month. Even so, inevitably some junk mail gets through. We have already begun a project to increase our spam blocking, which will block more spam before it gets to your mailbox. It's going to take a couple of months to implement the necessary system changes, but you'll see improvement in the first half of 2008.

Direct Connect

The ability to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook is a popular feature. We are currently working on an enhancement to our Direct Connect application that will simplify and improve the installation process and improve synchronization speed. The engineers have already completed the coding for these changes, and we are currently testing the new version. This update is scheduled to be released before the end of March.

All of the above projects are a key focus for us in the first half of 2008. We're working hard to deliver improvements to you in a timely manner. I can't guarantee we'll hit all the dates, but I will guarantee that when we deliver, we'll deliver high quality improvements.

Feature Awareness

There were a few things that were included in your feedback but not covered above. We received feedback on several items that are already available within BlueTie. We're going to do more to raise awareness of these features and how to use them, but we wanted to cover the most common items here:

• Viewing Only 10 Emails at a Time: You can change the number of email messages displayed at any one time to a maximum of 50 in the Email - General Settings area of Preferences.
• Requiring Password Changes: The frequency at which you must reset your password is controlled by your enterprise administrator who can set the time interval between requiring a new password. They can set it to any number, 15, 20, 60 days, whatever they feel is appropriate for your business. They can even choose to not require new passwords at all. I'm not sure I would recommend that final setting, but this is something your enterprise manager sets on a per account basis. The current default setting is 30 days, which is generally recommended as a good practice for security.
• Session Timeout: The length of time of inactivity before your account is automatically logged out for security purposes is a setting that can be adjusted in two ways. One, the enterprise administrator can set the default and then determine if individual users have access to change this setting. If the administrator allows individuals to change this setting, you can change it in the General - Change Security Settings section of Preferences. Just be careful with the length of time you put in there, because, just like the password reset, a lower time is recommended for higher security.
• Email & Event Notifications: Email and event notification pop-ups are already available in BlueTie. The New Email Notification preference is available in the Email - General Settings area of Preferences. For Calendar Events, the setting for reminders is in the Calendar - General Settings area of Preferences.

Thanks to all who provided feedback! Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any questions or comments.

Fostering the Entrepreneurial Spirit

The entrepreneurial spirit. It's something that we feel should be encouraged and supported. Not quashed. It's how BlueTie got started! And because that spirit is ingrained in our company, we thought it was time to encourage it in a more formalized fashion.

To that end, BlueTie is proud to be a sponsor of Intuit's Just Start campaign.

Here's the gist: Log on to www.iwilljuststart.com and fill out the form that declares what you will just start doing to make your own business a reality. What is your passion? What drives you? What will make you happy from a career standpoint? Declare it and you're on your way to making it a reality.

The best part? You could win $50,000 to get your business idea up and running!

Learn more and review the rules at www.iwilljuststart.com.

ps - If you're in the New York City area on November 9th make sure to stop by Vanderbilt Hall in the Grand Central Station terminal. David will be there live, supporting the Just Start campaign and answering questions about how he got started.

Happy Birthday Featuretisements!

Featuretisements celebrated its first birthday on Tuesday, October 23rd!

What a first year it's been, too.

Last year, we launched Featuretisements as an innovative way to monetize applications. We knew it was something that would shake up the industry... but we didn't expect the tremendous response we received.

To date, we have implemented four Featuretisement partners including Orbitz and Constant Contact. What's even more impressive though is the number of partners that have signed contract to become Featuretisement partners. Currently the number of partners stands at 23! And that's just signed partners. The phones are continuously ringing with other providers who are interested in signing on as well.

Let's not forget that Featuretisements also took first place at the ad Tech awards this April for best business to business transaction Web site!

What does it all mean? It means that year two should be even more interesting! Stay tuned for what comes next...   

What a rush!

For the past three years, BlueTie has been attending the ISPCON trade show. For those of you who don't know, ISPCON is an industry event for the Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry. This is an annual event that provides an opportunity for those in the industry to discuss the future of their businesses, with topics such as increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) and profits, optimizing operations and learning what's up and coming.

Well this year, what was up and coming was BlueTie. The buzz at our booth was unlike anything we have experienced before.

Our Web client, combined with our Featuretisement approach of enabling ISPs to turn email into a profit center by sharing revenue with them generated tremendous interest on the show floor.

We had huge ISPs like NTT, along with a hundred smaller ISPs stop by our booth. Attendees stopped by, saying that "last year everybody talked about Google AdSense to monetize their platforms, this year everybody is talking about BlueTie and Featuretisements!"

In fact, some people told us that other ISPs directed them to our booth, saying that they had to stop by and learn more about what we were doing.

It was great to get such fantastic buzz, and affirmation of our model.

It's all about change for the better

We've seen a lot of positive progress at BlueTie in the past few months. From the launch of our first integrated features in partnership with leading Web service providers such as Orbitz, Constant Contact, eFax and Business.com, to signing distribution agreements with some of the biggest names in the Internet Service Provider industry, to being one of the fastest-growing small and medium-sized business service providers. It's been a great year.

And now there's something else to be excited about.

We've just launched a brand new look and feel for our Web site. It's a clean, new look that makes it much easier for you to find what you're looking for, and highlights all that we bring to our various customers and partners. Check it out for yourself.

In touring the updated site, you'll see one more thing that's new... it's our promise to you.

Some may call it a tagline, but it's really so much more than that. It reflects who we are, what we deliver to our customers and where we are going as a company. It encapsulates the identity, passion, values and vision of our company into a quick, concise phrase. It's a short sentence that acts as an invitation, a call-to-action, a rallying cry and a commitment.

It's a commitment to continuously deliver new technologies via SaaS, creating a competitive advantage for you and your company.

For BlueTie, that is "Inbox Innovation"